


Walk the Line

by SnowStormSkies



Series: Honour and Obey [1]
Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Power Play, unorthodox relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:11:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowStormSkies/pseuds/SnowStormSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simone had allowed herself to believe that – relished in the fact that her children were normal for the first time in their lives. She’d never stopped loving them, wouldn’t dream of it because regardless of who was or wasn’t in charge, they were her babies but she’d also never stopped hoping for them to reset the balance of authority between them either.</p><p>How blind a mother can be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The prequel to Restricted Freedom, this fic addresses Simone's perspective on the unorthodox and ultimately slightly daunting relationship between her sons.

  
  


Most people would think that with siblings, and especially with twins, it would be the older one who was in charge, the one who blazed the trail and the younger one would be the one who followed in the wake of the fire. She had heard all the stories from her friends and co-workers, and fellow artists, how one would be the leader and it was invariably the older one who appointed themselves to that role, taking command of the other like they were born to boss them around. When she found she was pregnant with twins, she assumed that the same would be true for her beloved children.

It really really wasn’t.

Right from the very beginning, even though Tom was older by ten whole minutes, he waited for Bill. Always, without fail Bill had to be first and Tom followed behind. Bill spoke their first word _(Tom!),_ Bill walked first ( _she wrote it proudly in the baby book – First steps, 2nd of May 1990_ ), Bill did everything that the baby book said and more first. He dived headlong into things and Tom obediently followed behind him, half a second behind Bill’s first word Tom spoke his _(Bill!),_ walking in Bill’s footsteps as Bill walked to Mama across the living room, letting Bill pick their direction and then walking the line that Bill marked out.

As they got older, it became more obvious. When the two of them played games in the playroom, she could see the very opposite of everything her friends had told her about the older being the leader coming true. When Bill was bored and wanted to do something else, Tom had to follow – it didn’t matter if Simone was playing with them and was perfectly okay with staying with Tom to finish their jigsaw or pushing cars around making _‘vroom vroom’_ noises while Bill went off to play with the dollhouse or watch a film. If Bill wanted to stop, Tom stopped; that was how it worked between them and Bill capitalised on it as often as he wanted.

Simone often was left surrounded by wood blocks or a half complete Lego set when Bill arbitrarily decided he absolutely had to play with the pretty dollies or a game of tea party and Tom obediently joined him; much to Tom’s teenaged disgust, she had pictures to prove it. Whole albums, in fact, of Bill pouring tea for a disgruntled looking Tom in a bonnet and white gloves; Tom pretending to drink from a pink plastic cup with what little dignity remained to him while Bill looked on with amusement at his brother’s plight; and even a very precious one of Tom in the blue and green pair to Bill’s pink and black kilt.

Even when Bill got old enough to realise that tea-parties weren’t really for boys, and things like throwing around a football or learning to ride a bike were much more appropriate for his gender, he never failed to monopolise Tom’s time and attention, drawing him away from the cars and the sandpit to sit and colour with Bill or to play with their teddies when the younger boy lost interest in bashing around bits of plastic and making toy guns out of blocks.

Even though he’d never really grown out of tea sets or anything, Bill had allowed Tom to cultivate some alternative pursuits such as skateboarding, and rollerblading, but as soon as Bill had had enough of being alone with his fashion magazines, or designing an outfit, or watching Tom sail off down the road on four or two wheels, he would call out and Tom would have to pack up the board or the ‘blades, and go inside.

When they were a little older and getting ready for school, she noticed it more and more. If she put two options of sandwiches on the table in front of them, Bill was always the one who picked which ones they both wanted for lunch the next day. When she bought them backpacks for their very first day, they talked together very seriously about the merits of blue over red and whether the addition of a water bottle or cartoon character badges were more important but Bill was the one who picked the actual items, told Mama with the most determined face ever that he thought that these two were the ones they needed. Tom was the one who actually carried them out of the shop, but Bill still had the ultimate authority as to _which._

Back at home, she had decided to test it further, had presented them with the contents of two different stationery sets all mixed up together so they’d have to go through it in order for each to have the required items for their first class the next day. According to the parenting books, she should either be breaking up a fight in thirty seconds, or watching as her children practised their lessons in being fair and sharing.

The parenting books had never met her twins, it turned out.

At the kitchen table, she’d watched Bill empty out the plastic bag of rulers, pencils, pens and erasers onto the wooden surface but Tom sat and observed silently as his twin carefully went through each item and placed them in front them in two piles – one for Bill and one for Tom. There was no fight but there was no lesson in sharing either; Bill was the one who decided he wanted the red set and that Tom had to have the blue things, and Tom just nodded seriously, not contesting the decision.

When he was finished, Tom hugged him and they put the stuff in their brand new bags and then Bill wandered off into the living room to watch a film and Tom followed to sit next to him even though he expressly said to Simone that morning that he never ever wanted to watch another Disney Princess film again.

That afternoon, Bill put in the Little Mermaid and Tom just cuddled up close to Bill and didn’t say a word.

As they got older, the authority never seemed to wane, despite what the psychologist she took them to said. It wasn’t a phase or a reaction to the new pressures of school, or just boys being boys despite what the stupid woman told her because it never faded.

Even when they grew older, moved up a year, two years, three years and beyond, the authority stayed constant. Tom walked in Bill’s footsteps, danced to Bill’s tune, and though they fought more often as they got older, and Tom amazingly enough seemed to win the physical altercation; he didn’t ever get his way in regards to what they were actually fighting about. She lost count of the times that she came in to the living room to find Bill flat out on the floor, Tom sitting on him to hold his brother down and yet still saying, “Alright, Bill, you win.”

The older they got, the more pronounced Bill’s dominance became in normal life. She saw everyday more signs that Bill had control of both of their lives – when Bill realised his dream was to be a singer of a band that _had_ to feature his brother, Tom packed away his barely recognized dream of being an artist like Mama, picked up the guitar that Gordon brought him and said, “What do you want to sing first?”

It was bittersweet for Simone – while her babies would remain forever close and she cherished the fact, she mourned the loss of her dream of teaching Tom how to draw with perspective, how to appreciate art, how to shape and mould clay with those hands that could equally be a guitarist’s or an artist’s.

Even later than that, at nine, when Bill had suggested a new hairstyle, she had been thinking he had been talking for himself – he had always been progressive in that respect; fashion and the like. When he started pulling on Tom’s blonde hair, though, the very same hair that his twin had been growing out for several years _(at Bill’s request, no less),_ describing dreadlocks and showing her his research into the topic, she realised her mistake in assuming he was merely talking about himself.

He was prepared too, handed her a folder of typed information and she had read it then and there at the kitchen table, surprised at the level of effort Bill had put into it – there were articles printed from various dread websites, going into the care and maintenance, the actual process of dreading the hair, working out the cost – it was like Bill had been planning this for ages. He probably had, she thought as she read; he was impulsive, but when he decided something he did his very best to get it, and he had known she would need more convincing than just _because I said so._

When she put the question to Tom _do you really want this or are you going along with your brother?_ it had been not Tom who answered but Bill.  
 _Mama, we talked about it, I want them and so does he._ She never quite got over that – _I want them_ – as if Tom was a fashion doll for Bill to style and dress according to his whims but but Tom never objected to Bill’s desire that he bleach his hair, or that he allow Bill to accompany him to the hairdresser’s in order to have the dreads put in, or that he stop bleaching them when he turned thirteen.

The day she entered the living room, to see Tom kneeling at Bill’s feet while her little punk haired pixie applied the wax that he had so carefully picked out for Tom at the hairdressers _(I don’t like the pineapple, Tom; here, try the coconut. I like it much more….),_ she realised that while she had promised to help Tom out, dreaming of a little quality time with her eldest son that was so rare as he got older, she would never get the chance.

Two weeks before, Bill had spirited Tom upstairs after several hours of sitting in the hairdresser’s as Tom suffered the indignity of having four women surrounding him, touching his hair while Bill held his hand, and Simone didn’t see them for the rest of the evening again.

And even as she watched, Tom had been looking at the television, blind to her presence as he bent his head to another angle for his brother to reach a new dread; only Bill noticed her entrance to the room. He grinned at her, even as he said, “Wax, Tom” and Tom obediently lifted the tub up to Bill’s waiting hands, and she didn’t smile back.

Bill’s hands had been possessively threaded through those new dreadlocks, and Tom’s head bowed to Bill’s unspoken demand of obedient silence.

The day when Gustav and Georg came along, met her sons in a dingy club in the middle of Magdeburg, she had been over the moon with the belief that Bill’s controlling tendencies would be reduced, or at least better controlled. Having two other people there would mitigate the effect of it at least, she had suggested to Gordon who had grunted at the false hope that she was clinging to and gone back to tuning the guitar in his lap. He’d never seen much wrong with Bill’s ways because it was so very Bill and very very very difficult to actually pinpoint because it was getting to be much more subtle a lot of the time these days, but she was their mother and she worried.

She had good reason to.

As they got older, it only got worse.

When she took the boys clothes shopping, she let them have more free reign over their purchases because they now refused to wear what she brought them _(we’re almost fifteen, Mama. I think it’s time that I picked our, err my own clothes, if you don’t mind)_ and Bill’s control came out to bear. He was the one holding up things to Tom’s chest, pointing out which colours worked better, critiquing his brother’s choice of t-shirt as Tom stood in the dressing room doorway, awaiting judgement. Simone watched in part awe and part bemusement as Tom obediently returned the clothes to the rack that Bill disliked, and passed to Bill the ones that were approved of, and carried on sorting through the masses of clothes that Bill threw at him.

Sometimes something as small as a raised eyebrow from Bill was enough for Tom to reject the pair of jeans or the shirt, or the tiniest hint of a smile was enough to let the garment find its way into his twin’s hands. Other times, Bill took him to the mirror at the end of the hall, pulling Tom to stand in front of the glass while Bill stood behind, adjusting the fabric of a potential shirt, comparing different looks, rolling up Tom’s sleeves for him.

Sometimes, Bill would lean in close, whispering in Tom’s ear, meeting Tom’s eyes in the mirror and Simone had never felt so out of place because they really didn’t even need her there.

Bill tried on a few items, but mostly selected his clothes by sight; saying he would sew them to fit better, or cut them to size; his main focus was Tom who apparently needed help with everything. Bill slid his belts through the loops, adjusted his sweatbands, untucked any dreads caught in the necklines of his hoodies, and in general doted upon Tom as he dressed him, and made him get undressed.

Bill’s style was flashy – look at me, pay attention to me, give me your focus and time – with t-shirts and vest tops, and even a few pairs of shorts for the summer. Tom was different. His clothing was softer, with the focus on comfort, and warmth; baggy hoodies, big shirts, and long sleeve shirts under them.

Tom felt the cold more than any other child Simone knew, desperately seeking cuddles and extra blankets in mid-September, nevermind in mid-winter. Bill had obviously taken this into account with the clothes he had picked – she had intended on buying them some shorts and t-shirts for their next school year, and... well. She was their mother, and yet she hadn’t even thought about Tom’s need for more layers. But Bill had. He picked clothes that could be layered, long undershirts that could be put underneath the overshirts, big thick jumpers and hoodies with warm fleece inside, and scarves with tassels for the bitter winters. Tom trusted him, taking the clothes that Bill handed him with blind acceptance.

After she took them to pay, she realised that _everything_ in Tom’s basket had been vetted by Bill, every pair of jeans, every t-shirt, every jumper, even things as small as the sweatbands and underwear had been painstakingly chosen by her youngest but the same could not be said in the other direction. Everything in Bill’s basket had been vetted by Bill and only Bill.

She had had influence over neither, really.

Back at home, the boys vanished upstairs after thanking her for the shopping spree and when she looked in on them a few minutes later, she found Tom neatly folding his new clothes into his drawers as Bill looked on, holding the newest tub of wax and pointing an authoritative finger to the floor in front of him where he sat on the bed. And just like that, Bill’s wish was fulfilled as Tom folded the last shirt, closed the drawer and came to sit in the floor, and she saw Bill’s hands thread through those soft blond ropes of hair, digging his fingers into Tom’s scalp to relieve the tension from the tight banding process.

Tom’s expression of blissful pleasure had made her worried but not as much as Bill’s soft, possessively sweet smile that spoke of more.

Their little band meant her children spent more time together, almost every waking hour but Simone believed that the addition of a drummer and bassist there would help to teach Bill that he couldn’t always have Tom to himself and give Tom some friends at the same time. She didn’t like their current ones – they were so rough and she often smelt weed and beer on the twins’ clothing the morning after a party, and she knew some of the boys in the group had been in trouble with the police. She knew her boys had been in trouble before, but they were not bad boys, not like those gang members they hung around with.

Georg and Gustav were nice boys, though, much to her pleasure, and gelled to Bill and Tom almost immediately; Georg loved to laugh and had the filthiest jokes on the planet at his disposal which caused Tom to gravitate towards him and Gustav had a downright wicked sense of sarcasm that often left all of them in stitches. They were very good at keeping Bill and Tom interested and focused, rather than allowing them to fall back into their usual method of hiding away from the world.

Their extra one or two years also meant both Gustav and Georg were that little bit more aware of the social norms of brotherhood and a little bit more understanding of the unusual nature of the twins but she hoped that by having them over _all_ the time (and it really was all the time; it was like suddenly acquiring two extra sons with the amount of times they slept over) that Bill would be forced to step back and let go of his micro-control of Tom.

It really didn’t change anything.

When Bill wanted to practise, Tom got out his guitar and plucked the strings until his fingers _bled_ unless Bill noticed first and put a stop to the session. And that wasn’t an exaggeration, either. Aged fourteen, ages after Georg and Gustav arrived on the scene, she came upon a murder scene in the living room. Tom’s guitar covered in bloody droplets, a smear of it on the coffee table, and voices in the bathroom.

Simone had found Tom sitting on the bathroom counter, his hands on his lap on a towel as Bill carefully cleaned them with antiseptic wipes and covered them in plasters; all the while talking quietly. Bill’s fingers were quick and gentle as he cradled Tom’s hands to tend to them. She had watched from the doorway, holding her arms around herself as Bill applied the last plaster and then he offered hugs and kisses and they weren’t normal hugs and kisses.

She had expected a joking kiss on the fingers to _kiss it better_ but Bill had kissed him on the forehead; a tender kiss, one to which Tom had bowed his head and accepted, his eyes fluttering shut as he wrapped his bandaged fingers in Bill’s shirt and wrapped his legs around Bill’s waist, drawing his brother close. They’d stayed like that for a long time, Bill stroking his fingers down the back of Tom’s neck as he…

As he kissed the pulse in Tom’s neck, the move small but the meaning great.

She had left them there, cuddling in the bathroom while she went downstairs, wiped down the coffee table, threw the bloody cushion into the washing machine but she didn’t touch the bloody guitar. Instead, she left it on the bed in Bill’s bedroom – the large double bed that Bill had insisted on when she had split them up, concerned at finding them sharing a single bed at eleven.

Fifteen minutes after she left them in the bathroom, she heard two sets of footsteps on the stairs – one heading up stairs into Bill’s room, the other coming down to the ground floor; Tom emerged into the living room to collect his guitar that he thought was in the living room, and Simone wanted to talk to him, ask him what had happened.

“I hurt my fingers.” Long, dainty fingers with Spiderman plasters all over them were presented for her inspection. When she had prodded further, asking how, why, what happened, Tom had shrugged. “Bill asked me to play and I guess I forgot to stop.”

“Do you want a kiss and cuddle?” She had wanted it so much, needing to be close to Tom; all she got was a cocked head and a sweet smile.

“I love you, Mama.”

“I love you, too.” When Tom hadn’t moved, just pointed at the table… she’d sighed. “Your guitar is on Bill’s bed.”

“Thank you, Mama..." Tom walked away from her, back to Bill, to Bill’s room, and to Bill’s bed.

When Bill flounced off upstairs to write more lyrics, Tom tidied away their homework, said goodnight to her and Gordon before climbing the stairs and she could hear his quiet footsteps tread a familiar path to Bill’s door before the quiet thump of the door shutting echoed down to her in the kitchen.

When Bill was bored with their vaguely friends-not-friends and wanted to watch a film with Tom, he’d get a look on his face that told Simone that he was contacting his brother in their twinly way and Tom would inevitably rush home from the skate park and his own friends-not-friends, arriving at the door in mere minutes, panting from the exertion of running the mile home only to curl up next to his twin on the sofa and watch a girly chick flick that he had point blank refused to watch with his mother just twenty four hours before.

Bill held Tom in a tight grip and Simone found herself wondering just where to draw the line.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

When they went on tour for the first time, she thought that being around so many people, being so in the public eye would mean that Bill would have to relinquish control, let Tom assert his independence and freedom of speech. Surely David wouldn’t permit them to carry on like that – not with so much riding on it: career, reputation, money.

She saw the interviews in the papers, watched them closely on the television while they sat and were questioned by experienced anchor people and famous television personalities. She was vindicated – she hoped, _thought,_ prayed that what she was seeing was true; that her youngest’s tight grip on her eldest had lessened so much as to be almost non-existent. Bill was suddenly on the end of friendly ribbing from his twin; Tom fought him with fire in his words and even mock punched him a time or two. Finally, she thought to herself, turning off the last interview from that first week. Normality had returned and Bill’s reign of authority had ended.

She allowed herself to believe that – relished in the fact that her children were normal for the first time in their lives. She’d never stopped loving them, wouldn’t dream of it because regardless of who was or wasn’t in charge, they were her babies but she’d also never stopped hoping for them to reset the balance of authority between them either.

She had never stopped praying for Tom to use the backbone that he’d grown overnight against her and Gordon when he turned eleven, to turn it against Bill, seizing back control over his own life. She’d never stopped hoping that Bill would lose that control over Tom; the fine fingered, delicate control that was as soft as silk but as inescapable as iron shackles.

A mother can love her children, but Simone was never blind to their dynamics. Or so she thought.

It wasn’t until she arrived for a surprise visit in a hotel in the middle of a city that was otherwise unremarkable that she had her hopes dashed. Those frail, brittle hopes were seized by the cruel hands of reality and thrown hard against the wall of truth and Simone was helpless to do anything but understand and watch and actually see what the cameras had not picked up as the hopes she had clutched so victoriously shattered in silence.

Both the twins had run to her, ( _so tall already!_ she thought) and they talked non-stop between the two of them and Georg and Gustav, the flow of conversation kept going by teenage enthusiasm and the endless ability of Bill to jump from topic to topic but only when she sat back, let the hurricane of Bill’s confidence and brilliance rush past her did she actually see what was going on.

His control was never diminished at all – in fact, it was growing, changing, manifesting in subtler ways than outward demands for Tom’s time and attention. Instead of a constant litany of “I want…” and “Tom, answer me this…” she witnessed a kind of control that was breath-taking in its absoluteness, in its delicate intricacy.

Bill made it seem so _effortless._

In the restaurant for lunch Bill picked the food for the two of them under the guise of Tom not understanding the menu _(you took French too, Tom and got a better grade!_ she wanted to say), in the venue for the show that night Bill chose what songs to rehearse for the second time _(because I’m the singer, Mama! I always get to pick!)_ and Tom plucked at the strings of whichever guitar was handed to him until Bill was happy and only then did they stop; and back in the hotel after the show and the signings and the debrief from David when Bill wanted to go to bed _(come ooon, Tom. We need sleep for that interview tomorrow!),_ Tom followed him into the room they were sharing after kissing her goodnight.

Apparently, both of her sons were better actors than she thought.

The next morning, she found them eating breakfast in the dining room reserved for their entourage, tucked away in the corner at a table that a sign hanging from the edge in huge black letters denoted as the **“BAND TABLE”** but that wasn’t what drew her attention to the area.

It was Bill adjusting Tom’s hat with manicured fingers and Tom letting him – his hands were folded in his lap, and he made no attempt to stop his brother from touching him, from placing his dreads on his shoulders just to Bill’s liking, to Bill’s careful smoothing of the grey sweatband on his wrist to just where the younger twin wanted it.

Bill said something, his lips hardly moving but Tom nodded immediately, his hands clasped tightly together until Bill ran his black painted nail down over the fists of fingers and Tom reluctantly unclenched them, offering them palms up to Bill, who brushed his own fingers over them, pressed a brief kiss to the centre of each palm ( _such fine fingers, even for a musician)_ before returning them to Tom’s lap and tapping him on the nose instead. Tom laughed, and Bill smiled softly.

It was something she had never been permitted to do, touching around Tom’s head or face unless it was strictly necessary for motherly duties and the older he got, the less necessary it became. He’d withdrawn from physical contact as much as possible, sought touch only from Bill on a day to day basis, using Simone as a last resort when he couldn’t find his twin to give him what Bill had termed _touch love_.

From an early age, she’d sensed Tom pulling back from her, loving her from a distance that he very rarely breached with an extended hug or more than a kiss on the cheek before bed. The moment he’d had the dreads put in and they’d had enough trips to the hairdresser under their belts to be able to dread the new roots and maintain the braids themselves, she had been single handedly ousted from touching Tom almost completely; left to cling to Bill who was content enough to swing his skinny arms around her when he came in the door from school, pressing a kiss to her cheek before taking Tom’s hand and leading him up the stairs in order to do homework, or rehearse, or to just coil up together in the sunshine that streamed in through the dormer window of Bill’s bedroom like lazy cats.

Not once had Tom ever come to her like that.

Watching her youngest coo sweetly at her eldest, his fingers constantly moving around Tom’s person, massaging his fingers, stroking down the side of his face, rubbing his thumb over the lip ring that Bill had fought her for even as Tom has sat silent between them, Simone felt a pang of regret cross with the lancing pain of long faded anger at the fact that Bill had stolen away her eldest, kept him all to himself while she had been forced to watch them grow up with only minimum input. It was a thought that had plagued her from when they were toddlers, and no longer solely dependent on her for everything. She had carried them both for nine months and then been running after them ever since.

When she saw Bill touch Tom’s cheek with his fingers, his rings glinting in the sunlight through the window, she knew she had never been able to catch up to them; not really. Bill had always drawn Tom just out of her reach, happy to accept her love and pass it along to Tom through his own hugs and kisses or, very rarely, to briefly allow the two of them to come into contact but only for as long as he, Bill, permitted it.

It was always Bill who separated her hugs from Tom, or who pulled Tom away from her side to whatever Bill wanted even when Tom had made no complaint otherwise, always Bill who interrupted them during their quality mother-son time – laying himself across Tom’s lap, and pouting that he was being _deprived of twin time_ and _wasn’t it time they went and practised anyway, Tomi?_

When the other members of the band arrived, she watched from her position on the adults’ table as they settled on the other side of the table and she wondered whether Bill would stop his touching of his twin in front of the new company because surely someone had pointed out how strange and borderline inappropriate it was. Neither of the older boys seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary, however, and she felt faint when she realised that for them to not consider it strange or odd, they had to have been exposed to it all this time.

Bill had never given up control; he’d just switched it from one kind to another and Simone had completely missed it.

She watched as Gustav reached over to mess up the carefully positioned hat a top of blonde dreadlocks, and Tom reared backwards, his hands coming up to defend himself from the drummer’s advances, his smile wide but his eyes frightened at the closeness of another person. Even from this distance, she could see him struggling with the perceived attack, even though he knew Gustav, knew that he wouldn’t hurt him.

Immediately, his protector came to his rescue; Bill soothed his distress by batting away Gustav’s wriggling hand that still threatened Tom’s headgear even as the drummer laughed and reached for the paper with the other. As soon as Gustav’s attention was successfully diverted, Bill turned back his brother, adjusting the almost disturbed hat to just so and running his fingers down Tom’s arms, curling them around Tom’s quaking hands underneath the table where most other people couldn’t see them.

Tom gave Bill a half smile and Bill had leaned forward, pressed their foreheads together and whispered something that made Tom huff out a breath, made the tension seep out of his shoulders from where they’d been tightly hunched. Bill had smiled at Tom then, so softly and gently that she could see the love in his eyes from where she sat, and Tom relaxed, nodding to something Georg said as Bill poured him a glass of juice.

Even though he appeared to be at ease though, Simone saw him watching Bill closely throughout the rest of the meal, and his twin responding to it; passing him the tomato sauce only to steal it back and squirt it out himself onto Tom’s plate, Tom reaching for the carafe of tea in the centre, only for Bill to put his hand on Tom’s, shaking his head as he wordlessly denied him, handing him cutlery and salt and picking which foods to eat for Tom instead of allowing him to pick his own. Tom settled back into his chair, drinking the juice that Bill handed him with a smile and a laugh at whatever the long haired bassist had just said.

Neither Gustav nor Georg seemed to see anything wrong with their behaviour, laughing about something that made Bill grin widely and Tom crack a joke that left Georg breathless with his giggles and Gustav flicking the corner of his paper down to stare across the table at him with a raised eyebrow. The four of them, in their own little world, and Simone looking in on it without permission. She watched as Bill pointed Tom towards the fruit bowl in the centre instead when her eldest reached for more bacon and he brought back to his plate a banana instead of the meat he had originally gone for.

Simone watched in fascination as he handed the fruit to Bill who calmly peeled it, cut it in half with a clean knife and dispensed one of the pieces onto Tom’s plate without once looking away from Gustav who was reading out something from the sports section.

Only when Bill nodded at him did Tom actually pick up the banana and actually start to eat it. When he finished, Bill handed him a napkin for him to wipe his mouth, and she watched in bewilderment as Tom obediently wiped the cloth across his face before putting it down. Bill’s thumb ran across his lip without a thought of the other people at the table, leaning close and whispering into his ear directly.

Gustav just drank his tea, and Georg buttered more toast and neither of them seemed to find anything wrong with Bill holding Tom’s hand, pouring him more water, reaching a hand into the pocket of Tom’s hoodie to draw out a packet of mints without asking.

David passed her a mug of coffee but she barely noticed, too caught up watching her children’s dynamics and it barely made sense to her at the same time that it felt achingly familiar. She didn’t know what to think and she spent most of the meal focused on the table in the corner where the youngest people in the room held their own private court, and Bill kept his control over Tom like an iron collar wrapped in lace.

-

Breakfast had finished, and she had retrieved her flight bag from the room she had taken for the night, and said her thank yous to the various members of staff that kept her sons safe from the screaming hordes of fans who had already gathered outside the hotel. Not soon enough, though, it was time to be on the way to the airport and her own home - her own empty home without Bill and Tom while they carried on touring with their band and security and David.

She’d shaken Georg and Gustav’s hands because they were almost men now and surely they would want to be treated like it at seventeen and eighteen, but they shrugged, pulled her into hugs anyway because you’re Simone, and you’re practically family anyway and she drew them tight against her because they were the only people who really could keep Bill and Tom connected to this world sometimes. She’d seen it, in the green room, on the stage during rehearsal, in the restaurant during dinner the previous night; the only people who could draw Bill and Tom out of their own little world and back to this one were the placid Georg and the ever observant Gustav.

Over the last days, she’d looked into the drummer’s dark eyes and wondered what he’d seen to make him so aware of Bill and Tom all the time – how he was always ready with a comment or a remark that lead to another topic and Bill being drawn into another conversation even as he held Tom’s hand beneath the table. Gustav had been a steady constant to her twins, keeping Bill’s tendency to overbear in check with conversation and pointed looks at her to remind her youngest that his mother was still there.

She was also curious to learn how Georg managed to be so on the ball without ever seeming to lift a finger when it came to the twins, what made Tom’s fellow guitarist so deft at keeping Tom talking when he seemed to want to retreat into silence and let his twin take over like she’d never been able to do, how Georg managed to always insinuate himself in a position which meant that she never entered Bill and Tom’s room without him or Gustav, or David calling ahead first, or go into the green room without his early warning.

When she kissed Tom goodbye after breakfast had finished, he smelled like Bill’s deodorant and shower gel and just plain Bill and his eyes were tired though his smile was bright.

“I love you, Mama.” He said, softly, so the others didn’t hear him being sappy.

“I love you too, Tom.” She said, equally softly.

“Have a safe trip, Mama.” Bill said, leaning over Tom’s shoulder, grinning widely at her even as he interrupted their goodbye.

As she walked away, she saw their hands curling together, and Tom leaning into Bill’s side. Bill smiled at him and Tom’s whole face lit up – his world was reset again and all was well again, and it wasn’t because of her.

Simone was leaving.

His world should have been set off kilter, watching his custodial parent walk away from him and out of his chaotic world that must surely disturb his OCD that had once upon a time reduced him to tears when the plates in the pantry weren’t in size order but his world wasn’t in chaos because Bill was there.

Bill was there to reset his emotional scales, relay the balance for Tom, keep him upright and moving forward on the meteoric rise to stardom that Bill had told her would happen all those years ago. Just a touch, a smile, a word from Bill and Tom’s whole face burst into sunny happiness, innocent joy shining through the thin veneer of adulthood combined with teenage arrogance that had been partly constructed by David and partly by a very reluctant Tom (or was it actually Bill?) to protect his playboy image that was surely not real.

When she’d asked Georg about it, he’d smiled at her and asked her to pass him the water on the table next to her. He hadn’t answered her question, and she didn’t ask again.

She watched from the lobby as Tom gestured to something outside the window and Bill laughed, his hand coming up to pat at Tom’s shoulder, his face expressive and without shadows of the mask she’d seen him don without thinking around her. David stood apart from them, phone to clamped to his ear but she didn’t watch him – she was captivated by watching Tom.

His shy smile, his fluttering fingers, his lip biting as he talked, his hands waving around as he tried to put across a point that his twin obviously found amusing because instead of answering him with words Bill simply leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, running his thumb over Tom’s lower lip when he drew back. Tom was silent after that.

The smile that bloomed in the wake of the kiss though spoke more than any words she knew he could use; it was sweet, delicate and so raw that it sucked the breath from her lungs, even as she caught Georg and Gustav staring at her through the doorway into the restaurant, moving to block her view of her sons but it didn’t matter. She’d seen and their frowns wouldn’t make her forget.

Bill did that. Bill put that smile there. Not her. Not Georg or Gustav, or anyone else. Bill...

That might have been Tom’s face, but the smile? Belonged to Bill.

Simone climbed into the taxi, barely remembering to thank the doorman who hailed it for her, and put her head in her hands after muttering her destination to the driver. All her hope that Bill’s tight grip on his brother was finally fading after fifteen years was gone; wiped away in twenty four hours of careful observation. Bill was still in control. Bill was still in charge. Bill was still marking the line for Tom to walk down and Tom was still walking it. Obediently marching to the tune that Bill hummed, or sang, or thought at him, Tom’s every move was Bill’s to dictate.

Outside the window, there was a flurry of movement, and when she looked up and saw her sons waving goodbye to their mother, she didn’t know what to think about anything anymore because….

…They were both happy.

And who was she to destroy that?


End file.
